So, you’ve decided that you would like to try your hand at gardening, but you are hesitant. Perhaps you have an arthritic lower back and an equally arthritic knee that makes getting down on the ground so tricky you need to formulate a strategy for getting back onto your feet again. Maybe you live in town and your yard is too small to put in a garden. Don’t despair. There is a solution. It’s known as raised beds, and these have other positives besides easier access and saving space.
What are these other pluses of using raised beds to grow plants and vegetables, you wonder. For starters, raised beds have excellent drainage so you won’t have to worry about your plants becoming waterlogged. Raised beds are also simple to take care of and it’s also easy to tend your plants from all sides while making getting down onto the ground unnecessary if a bed is tall enough to allow one to stand. Raised beds also allow for the easy blending of improved mixes of soil and there is no digging in ground that could double as a slab of concrete. Raised beds also provide a greater harvest per square foot than a traditional garden. Now you are interested. This sounds good, and you wonder what size a raised bed should be. Raised beds should be no less than a six inches tall. Six inches is sufficient for most garden plants, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli etc. Taller beds, (12”) however, are necessary for Tomatoes, corn and other larger garden plants. Eighteen inches high is perfect bench seat height, so you can sit on the edge and reach in. That is better on the back than the shorted beds. Even better is the 24” high beds, they are particularly useful for those achy backs and grouchy knees not to mention easier for those with limited capabilities when it comes to bending and reaching. All sides of the raised bed should be no wider than 4 feet to ensure easy access. Install 3’ wide aisle between the beds. Beds adjacent to a fence should be no more that 2’ wide. You’ve made up your mind. Raised beds are for you. Now you just need to know how to go about building said raised beds. This is best done by using types of wood that are resistant to rotting such as redwood, cedar, or pressure treated wood. Nobody wants to go to all the trouble of building a nice, raised bed or two just to see it decay, after all. It is also recommended that you use galvanized or zinc-coated screws and brackets. Though they can be more difficult to erect, beds constructed from brick or stone can be quite attractive and more durable than beds made from wood. At Home Grown Gardens we encourage the use of Green Beds by Shelter Works. These beds are easy to install and rated at 30 years, twice what you will get with a wood constructed bed. The beds are built, and you are hankering to plant but now you need to decide on what type of soil to use for the best results. After all, you only want the best for your seeds and starts. Nothing less will do. A lot of landscape companies carry soil mixes that are specially designed to be used in raised beds. They are typically a combination of loam (or topsoil), a fibrous organic matter (such as composted bark), sand, and potentially composted manure. Soil purchased from a bulk supplier will need to be amended to get good soil biology, we recommend adding 2” on top of quality garden compost and ½” earth worm castings along with an organic fertilizer, all mixed into the top six inches. The soil should be topped off with 2” of quality compost once a year. OTHER SUGGESTIONS FOR RAISED BED SUCCESS:
Armed with this information, bad backs and bad knees, etc., don’t have to stand in the way of a nice, productive garden. You can grow flowers and fruits and vegetables and not have to worry about space or having a plan for getting back on your feet. With raised beds, you will also have the satisfaction of having built something out of nothing and you will be filled with a sense of pride as you look at your produce, your blossoms and your boxes and think, “I did that.”
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